Image of blood purification treatment using blood cell membrane-magnetic nanoparticles. Provided by UNIST
■ Ulsan Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) announced on the 26th that a research team led by Professor Joo-Heon Kang of the Department of Biomedical Engineering has developed a ‘blood purification treatment’ using ‘blood cell membrane-magnetic nanoparticles’ wrapped around the surface of magnetic nanoparticles with a blood cell membrane. According to the research team, if the blood cell membrane-magnetic nanoparticles react with the blood of a patient circulating outside the body, pathogens such as bacteria and viruses can be captured and then taken out with a magnet and sent out of the body.
The surface of red blood cells or white blood cells has the characteristic of protecting the human body by catching pathogens, and functional magnetic nanoparticles were made using this. This treatment has the advantage of being effective and universal because it can be applied to any patient or pathogen. It can remove 99% of multidrug-resistant bacteria and 135 types of bacteria present in human feces, and it can also remove new coronavirus infection (COVID-19, Corona 19) mutations. The research results were published on the 7th in the online edition of the international academic journal ‘Small’.
■ POSTECH announced on the 26th that a joint research team led by Professor Dae-Soo Lee of Physics Department and Professor Se-Young Park of Soongsil University has developed a technology that can draw data in an area smaller than 10 nanometers (nm, 1 nanometer is one billionth of a meter). Calcium titanate (CaTiO₃) thin film, which is a metastable ferroelectric, changes the polarization direction of the material simply by pressing it lightly with a probe. A very weak force of 100 nanonewtons (nN) is sufficient. With this force, the research team succeeded in making the width of the polarization switching region smaller than 10 nanometers, finding the possibility to dramatically increase the data storage capacity. This is because the smaller the size of the region, the more data can be stored in one material. As a result of drawing the data storage area with a probe on the thin film, the storage capacity increased to 1 terabit (Tbit) per 1 cm area. Unlike the data storage method using an electric field, the method using a probe uses only a small amount of force, so the burden on the device is also small. It is expected to be used in next-generation electronic devices with increased integration and efficiency in the future. The research results were published in the international academic journal ‘Physical Review Letters’ on the 11th.